Use Facebook a bit more privately and wisely with these five Facebook tips.
1. You Can Access Facebook Business Pages even if you don’t have a Facebook Account. If you are interested in checking out a company or organization’s Facebook page, simply use a search engine and type in the name of the company or organization followed by Facebook. Chances are that you will find a listing for their Facebook page. Alternatively if you know their Facebook username e.g., www.facebook.com/”username” you can directly access their page by typing this into your web browser. Why do you want to check out a Facebook business page? You may find events, discounts, special offers, promotions, or news about a company’s products. You will also find a link to the company’s website on the Info tab if you are looking for additional information. Many local towns, libraries, restaurants, the news media, and small businesses have Facebook business pages. Check them out and you may be pleasantly surprised!
2. You Can Keep A Low Profile on Facebook. You do not have to post a profile picture or post abundant personal information on Facebook. The only information required on Facebook is your sign up information – name, email, gender, birth date, and account password for log in. Once you have an account your birth date can be hidden by going to Profile, Edit Profile, and selecting “Don’t show my birthday in my profile” or “Show only month & day in my profile” from the drop down under your birth date.
3. Review Your Privacy Settings Monthly. As Facebook makes enhancements to features it may also enhance privacy setting options. Facebook also defaults to opting in rather than opting out. Be sure there are no new features that you are opted into. Become a fan of Facebook and Privacy (www.facebook.com/fbprivacy) to get the latest updates from Facebook on privacy topics, and watch the Facebook privacy videos on that page to learn more about privacy settings.
4. Hide from Search Engines. To optimize privacy, make sure that your Facebook profile will not be found by search engines. Click on Account, Privacy Settings, and Edit your settings from Apps and Websites. Then click on Edit Settings from Public search. Facebook will default to “Enable public search” (the box will have a check mark). Just click on the check mark next to “Disable public search”. To see how your profile preview would look on a search engine, click on See preview.
5. Top News vs. Most Recent. Your News Feed will default to Top News. This is based upon a Facebook algorithm, and is a subset of your complete News Feed. Click on Most Recent to see all your News Feed items. Click on the drop down next to Most Recent for additional News Feed filtering options one of which is Edit Options. Click on this so that you can filter your News Feed to show posts by “Friends and pages you interact with the most” or “All of your friends and pages”. If you have been missing posts, it could be because of this setting!
Jeri Usbay 